Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program (BIP): Traumatic memory and national identity across languages and cultures: Japan, Lebanon and modern-day Egypt -- Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Stockholms Universitet, Universitetet i Oslo
The Traumatic memory and national identity across languages and cultures: Japan, Lebanon and modern-day Egypt BIP aims to build a multicultural dialogue between students of the three partner Universities and to encourage discussion across cultural differences. The BIP focuses on how collective trauma and the memory and post-memory of the recent past in Japanese and Arabic sociocultural contexts, with a focus on Lebanon and Egypt, are reworked and elaborated in a cross-cultural perspective. Special attention will be paid to the dynamics of national identity construction, addressed through the analysis of media and visual productions, which are invaluable in investigating the anxieties that characterize Japanese and Arabic societies today. During the course, which includes the adoption of innovative teaching methods, learners will acquire new knowledge regarding the Japanese and Arabic contexts and critical skills that are fundamental to an accurate analysis of the present.
Quoting directly the official 2024 Erasmus+ Programme Guide, Blended Intensive Programmes "are short, intensive programmes that use innovative ways of learning and teaching, including the use of online cooperation" where learners "will undertake a short-term physical mobility abroad combined with a compulsory virtual component facilitating collaborative online learning exchange and teamwork".
This BIP, therefore, is divided in two main parts: an online, on-demand part that will be available on the Unibo Virtuale platform from mid April, and an intensive in-person part that will take place in Bologna, from June 17th to 21st. Students will be required to both submit the required assignments in the online part and to participate to the in-person workshop part of the program to fully complete the programme.
By completing the BIP students will gain 6 ECTS, equivalent to 60 hours of work: 30 for the online part, and 30 for the Intensive in person part of the program.
The BIP aims to stimulate the learners' awareness of the transcultural and interconnected nature of the dynamics of re-elaboration of traumatic memory and national identity formation through the analysis of the most recent media productions, striving to achieve a 'global citizen education".
In this perspective it aims at encouraging a greater awareness of intercultural dynamics in the global context through the analysis of representations and movements, responding to an ever-increasing demand from the job market in contexts where linguistic-cultural communicative abilities are required (e.g. service and communication sector, in interlinguistic contexts characterised by processes of internationalisation and multiculturalism).
More specifically, the training that the students will acquire aims to complete and refine the preparation needed for employment in occupational sectors related to the realities of Japan and the Arab countries, with particular reference to new emerging professional profiles that combine technical skills with deep cultural and relational knowledge.